


growing up

by jonphaedrus



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: F/M, Gen, Talesmas 2014, post-f arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:23:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they let go, even Asbel looks teary eyed, and Sophie presses the best smile she can onto her face. “I’ll be home in a couple of years.” She’ll miss her baby sibling being born, but she can’t stay still any longer, even though she wants to. She wants to go, explore, see the world. Yes, she will live forever, but she’s still just now growing up.</p><p>She tucks her long hair back behind her ear, lifts the backpack Cheria stuffed with more food than she’ll ever be able to eat, and turns away from her home before she decides she never wants to leave. It will still be here when she gets back, but she’ll have been able to go places she never had a chance to explore before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	growing up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middletails](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middletails/gifts).



> merry christmas middletails \o/ this was written for talesmas 2k14

“We’re going to miss you, you know,” Cheria’s arms around Sophie’s shoulders are warm and comforting, and for a moment longer Sophie leans back into her, face buried in her shoulder, careful of her mother’s swollen, pregnant stomach. “It just won’t quite be the same without you.” Sophie nods, trying to hold back the tears at the back of her eyes. She’s old enough now to not have to cry, but she always feel like she almost will.

Finally, Cheria lets her go, and wipes her eyes on the back of her sleeve. Asbel is standing there awkwardly behind her, and Sophie moves past her mother to hug him, much tighter than she hugged Cheria, and her father makes a quiet, wheezing pained noise. “Sophie,” Asbel’s voice is amused and crushed, but he hugs her back almost as tightly.

When they let go, even Asbel looks teary eyed, and Sophie presses the best smile she can onto her face. “I’ll be home in a couple of years.” She’ll miss her baby sibling being born, but she can’t stay still any longer, even though she wants to. She wants to go, explore, see the world. Yes, she will live forever, but she’s still just now growing up.

She tucks her long hair back behind her ear, lifts the backpack Cheria stuffed with more food than she’ll ever be able to eat, and turns away from her home before she decides she never wants to leave. It will still be here when she gets back, but she’ll have been able to go places she never had a chance to explore before.

 

 

 

 

Her first stop is Barona. She’s walked it dozens of times before, the road down to the boat to Barona, but she’s never done it just by herself. Asbel was always there before, but now it’s just her. She spends nights at cabins, sleeps under the stars, takes an afternoon helping the cows, throwing hay and learning how to milk them. She’s rushed down East Lhant Highroad so many times, that taking it slow and sedately is new and fascinating. 

The world is so much deeper and more fantastic when you aren’t rushing about to save it.

When Sophie arrives in Barona, she hikes up the castle and finds herself waved in without even having to take the back entrance, and she wanders into the front hall. It’s the same, almost, as it always is, and she’s turned away from the audience chamber because Richard is out.

He’s not in their hideaway, or his rooms, and in the end Sophie leaves the castle—she can guess where he’s hiding, and she finds him just north of Barona on the road, sitting up on the hill he’s loved since they were all children, sprawled in the grass, staring up at the sky.

Sophie bends over him, her long hair sliding down over her shoulders to puddle next to him, and she tilts her head to stare at him. Richard stares back at her and finally smiles.

“Richard,” Sophie says, hands planted on her knees, “You know, your guards will worry.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” he replies, still smiling. “Would you like to lay down here with me? I’m watching the clouds.” Sophie looks up into the sky, and then turns over and flops down next to Richard, the tops of their heads pressed together, bits of his golden-blond hair flipping into her face, hanging over her eyes. The clouds look like animals to her—a rappig, a Barona cow, a cat. They lay there in silence for a long time, not saying anything, not thinking anything.

“I’m going on an adventure,” Sophie says, finally, pulling and tugging on a long lock of her purple hair. Above her, Richard grunts, listening. “I don’t really know where yet.” She wants to follow Lambda, who got a body and then ran away, ran away who knew where, ran away out of shame and need to heal. “I want to see the world without having to save it.” Richard’s quiet, because he still blames himself. Sophie knows that for the rest of his life, he probably always will.

“Where will you go first?”

“I think maybe the country. I want to see what the smaller states and cities in Windor are like.” She’s seen Barona inside and out, Lhant is home, and Gralesyde is beautiful and vibrant. She wants to see little towns, she wants to see the farmland, she wants to try milking a cow. “Then Strahta, for the winter. And Fendel in the summer.” She feels Richard nod against the top of her head, and after a moment Sophie rolls over and sits up and leans over his face, their noses almost touching.

He raises blond brows back at her.

“What?” She’s smiling, and she presses their foreheads together until Richard starts laughing.

“Come with me, Richard!”

“I can’t do that!” He’s laughing still, and Sophie isn’t willing to let him run away from this.

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m king, and Dalan’s not getting any younger.” Richard means, of course, that Duke Dalan who ruled for him as regent twice before, maybe isn’t young enough to do it any more. Sophie ignores it. “Besides, I’m still rebuilding. It wouldn’t make sense for me to run away.”

“So just come with me to Windor.” Sophie sits up and stares out over the hill that they’re on, into the distant horizon. “I bet it would help rebuild if you went to see your people, pretended to be a normal person. Helped them farm and build, taught and took care of them. Don’t you?” She glances back at Richard, and he’s staring back at her.

“Do you really think so?” Richard says, finally. His honey-yellow eyes are bright, and Sophie pushes herself up to her feet, dusting dirt and grass off of her knees. He sits up after her, leaning on his elbows. “I’ve been afraid to for so long—I know I’m still not well loved.”

Sophie crosses her arms and tilts her head, a gesture learned from her mother, and shrugs. “I think that as long as you don’t appear to them to just be normal, they’ll always be a little afraid of you. People are always afraid of what they don’t understand.” That was why Lambda had ended up the way he had, maybe. “So I think you should show them what you’re like. There’s nothing better than you just…being you!”

Richard stares at her, smiling, and then out of nowhere starts laughing again, his blond hair flyaway in the breeze, his smile lighting up.

“You get more like your father every single day,” he says finally, and the suffusing warmth Sophie feels in response to this fills her head to toes, and she blushes, looking away from Richard, because there’s nobody she’d like to be more like than Asbel. Richard keeps smiling at her, and she knows he means it.

Maybe that’s the first sign that she’s truly growing up.


End file.
